Creation Myth
by Idle-Sovereign
Summary: This body is not her own. Marlene, a woman with uncommonly dark tendencies, has her life stolen by an adolescent Loki after an obsessive love destroys the object of his devotion. The prince is convinced that this time what he feels can be nothing but true, fated love. Marlene just wants to get back to Gotham. (Not a crossover.) Unbalanced!Loki.
1. rebirth

This story is not intended to glorify the darker parts of the human experience. However, it does contain scenes that might make one "clutch the pearls."

Unless you're into that sort of thing, then have I got a story for you!

This chapter rated **M** for violence, extremely harsh language, and some questionable romantic intentions between a pimp and his knife.

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Creation Myth

By: Idle Sovereign

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Chapter One:

**Rebirth**

Gotham was a hazardous place to live if you were underpaid, and like the majority of the population, Marlene was one of those hand-to-mouth survivalists. Economic downturn was nothing new in the city of permanently delayed housing developments, drug idled slums, and mismanaged social programs. No police, public servants, or buff dudes in black cowls seemed to affect any positive change. In fact, once the Batman disappeared from public view and city officials managed to incarcerate the more infamous criminals under the Dent Act, the presence of any protective force in the lower portions of the city was nonexistent. As long as the moderately wealthy citizens remained convinced of their own safety, then why bother listening to any other voices?

It had been a mistake to choose this corpse of a city as a new home; Marlene felt like a carrion bird pecking the last flesh from an already ravaged carcass, the fat and happy lions watching the struggle with something less than disinterest. Marlene could read the writing on the walls, she was good and god damn determined to have the collective resources to relocate somewhere less detrimental to her health.

The crossing sign flicked from a stern orange hand to a bright humanoid figure and Marlene Noble, along with more than a dozen others, bustled through the barely visible crosswalk. Finally catching sight of the sign for the bus station lightened her steps considerably.  
The sounds of late night were a constant reminder of all the major changes in her life. A few years ago would have found her already in bed at such a late hour, now she bused it across town just after midnight to a shift that started at 1:00 A.M.

She kept nurse and stripper hours.

Gotham Central Bus Station was unusually crowded for a late Tuesday night. Marlene opted to stand outside in the knee-knocking cold; large crowds of people weren't really her thing. Soon the smoking metal beast that trundled the grossly under-managed streets of Gotham would arrive with an empty belly, patrons would feed themselves into its sliding jaws, and settle inside.

There wasn't a stop in front of the club, she'd have to hoof the remaining three blocks.

The first time she'd made the trip to apply for the gig had been done with healthy trepidation during the early morning, as everyone knows that those who ply the trades of rape and murder work the night shift.

Marlene practically lived in The Narrows now.

**_"Attention, the number 22 bus has encountered a brief delay. We ask those passengers waiting to please be patient as it may take up to 30 minutes or more for it to arrive. I repeat the…"_**

Numb fingers fumbled slightly while she went fishing for her cell phone, plunging the depths of an emerald overcoat. Lady Aurora was going to be pissed.

The bus ended up being over 45 minutes late.

A roar into the night sent the bus on its way, Marlene jogged away from the stop with curses peppering each sharp step- she fucking hated to be late. There was always a group of prostitutes keeping each other company in front of a row of hollowed out shops by the stop, they usually liked to shake their tits at anything that moved, it was a business practice that Marlene could appreciate. Tonight they throw out sarcastic cheers as she jogs around them, urging her towards her destination.

"Oh shit, hunty, you better move it. Dikey Monroe is gonna brick up the crack in your ass if you late!" Miss Geneva speaks between smacks of gum.

Marlene shakes her head with a laugh as she slows to call out to the group.

"Guess you'll have to save me a spot on Fish Avenue if she does!"

"Aw, fuck. I got a highlighting kit in my bag right now. We throw some of that shit in your hair, your snatch is gonna smoke from all the business you'll pull in." The busty hooker snapped her fingers with a grin. "Pun in-fucking-tended, gurl."

It was all Marlene could do not to trip over herself laughing, though with little time to reply, she promised to bring back a plate of food for the lot of them after her shift.

Bringing the women food had become part of her after work routine. Marlene's personal feelings fluctuated significantly in relation to the prostitutes. At first is was disgust, a feeling that still made her raw with embarrassment, she knew better than judge another woman because of something as infantile as her sexual history or use of her body. The feelings of pity and hopelessness stuck around for a while, but they felt equally useless and judgmental.

Now she simply fed them and sometimes managed to convince them to come with her to the doctor for check ups. They were probably the reason it was becoming more and more difficult to hold onto her money; the girls lacked the means of obtaining any inkling of healthcare or insurance.

Shit got expensive after a while.

Concrete shifted to asphalt once she rounded the corner of a 24 hour liquor store. A blast of artificial light gave her need to wince with a muttered curse. In an effort to move out of the overbearing light, she hopped to the right, just out of the glowing half circle that barred the darkness from the shop.

Tonight wasn't going to find her at work, however, the universe had other appointments that she was long overdue. A dexterous hand struck from shadows, attached were the dirtiest fingernails Marlene had ever seen, the offending talons dug into her wrist with brutal intent. A sudden change in direction, the hand further insisted she join the darkness, it nearly sent her sprawling onto her side.

Once she was able to steady her legs in a position that wouldn't have her wobbling, Marlene met a pair dark eyes peering down only a few inches from her own. The face attached was plain, though seemed well suited for menace. If she passed it on the street she wouldn't have given it a second look.

The tell-tell click of swiftly opened knife drew her heavily lined eyes down to those nails again. "I'll take what's in your pockets, baby." Of course he had that clichéd roughness in his voice, like he was speaking through a throat of smoldering cigarettes, something that generally made the apples of her cheeks burn, but now made her fingers work stealthily next to her thigh.

"I've been watching you talk to my girls. First I figured you were just some curious bitch with big ol' heart, then I started getting complaints about how I don't give'em enough to see'a doctor."

His touch fell away from her wrist so he could push on her shoulder with his unarmed hand.

"Friggin' doctor? I mean, they're whores, who cares so long as they can fuck, right? Nobody comes here looking for pristine poon." The pimp trails off, unsure if Marlene can understand what he's trying to say. "Motherfuckers know what they're getting into is all I'm saying."

She rolls her eyes so hard that it nearly blinds her.

"I figure you got to have some kind of cash on you since- are you even listening to me?" His voice instantly lost its greasy confidence, he sounded almost offended. He finally took notice of her busy hands, which he responded to by laughing far too loudly.

"Once that Batman asshole disappeared I figured any bleeder dumb enough to walk around by herself was easy pickings. I guess I forgot some pussies got claws, huh?" Maybe he wasn't as dumb as he looked. He laughed again, the metallic jingle of his knife sounding in tandem.

God damn but was it a pain to work a stun gun out of your unmentionables.

"Hey, why don't you let me hel-"

The would-be thief's body hit the grimy pavement in a series of little jerks accompanied by muffled gasps of pain. As Marlene watched the display until something approaching arousal streaked up her spine and she forced herself to release the trigger, then detached the electrodes from the gun. The impulse to inflict suffering was unusually seductive in this moment, lulling her into a crouched position over his prone form. There wouldn't be enough time to achieve even niggling satisfaction.

"If I didn't have somewhere to be I would fuck you with your little friend here." She delicately plucked the knife from the ground, her tone full of longing and promise. "Wouldn't you like that, baby? I'd make it feel like we were the only people in the world." She nearly came when he whimpered softly in response.

It wouldn't take long before he could move his own body again; she really did need to go.

"You owe me 50 bucks for the air cartridge," she said gesturing the tip of the knife at him.

After giving his body another study she fed the sharp edge into the handle, and unfurled back to her full height. A wave of consideration rushed over her, putting a slight tilt to her head. There probably wouldn't be a whole lot of people who'd miss someone who referred to women as "bleeders." A man who treated women like property and couldn't managed to keep his hands clean for shit.

As she moves to retrieve the knife, to give into impulse, a roll of electric pain disrupts her thoughts.

_"How quickly you assume to owe me nothing! You exist only by my will, by the sickening audacity that I have to love you! I found you like a treasure."_

Marlene stares transfixed at the man on the ground, all he still does is shake.

_"You were made alive by my hand."_

The voice is controlled, thinks itself the ultimate authority.

_ "I'm not even allowed agency! You tear me open, leave me to struggle in a world I do not understand, and now you command that I-I MUST be beholden to you. I wish you had left me to my slumber, ignorant of the prying hands of a desperate monster!"_

Is that her voice?

_"Then I must do as all monsters do. I will destroy what I cherish so that it cannot leave me."_

The sound of her own screams make the knife fall from her fingers, she slams helplessly against the ground with shaking hands pressed to her ears. It feels like hours between the ebb of the violence in her head and the eventual nothingness that becomes her world. Marlene's mouth fills with the heartbeats she knows to be her last, she chokes on the realization, her moist gasping is the last thing the streets of Gotham hear of her.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Across an unfathomable ocean of galaxies a lithe figure cradles his head while an epoch's worth of devotion pours from his eyes. She had been so beautiful in her stillness. The object of his affection was still spread, arms and legs akimbo, before the claws of her cooled bathtub. Water clung to graying skin as her abused body drained of any previous color.

Though she did not stay this way for as long as he had anticipated.

Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard, was too consumed with his own grief to notice the wealth of color pouring back into the body on is floor. Facial muscles twitched, along with fingers and toes, as neurons began to fire again. It wasn't until the previously dead woman inhaled a gasping breath to fill her oxygen deprived lunges, then jolted up with flailing limbs. The prince jerked his head towards the commotion and looked on with misty-eyed horror as the thing he should have never wished for came to pass.

When the woman began to scream, he realized he'd never felt such punishing dread in his entire existence. Loki banished his elaborate armor with a wave of his hand. He had hoped to join his brother's band of adventures in order to give the proper magics time to corrode the body, so he'd dressed himself in preparation. Now he needed to move without it's cumbersome weight. The prince was hesitant. She was supposed to be dead. He'd loved her and she was supposed to be dead. Another scream threw his body into action, his imposing form crouched lowly over his pretty corpse girl as she continued to squirm with renewed life.

"How is it that you...live?" His voice was softened by childish wonder.

Mutterings floated up from her pinking lips, undecipherable in their softness.

"Have you come back to me?"

The warmth that flooded through him was pure pleasure. Had death itself had a change of heart? Could it be possible that it understood the true depths of Loki's solitude?

All the lightness in his chest was suddenly snuffed out when the alarming strong grip of the no longer dead woman on the floor found his neck. He jerked away on instinct, but found himself merely dragging her up and along with him as his back crashed into tiled wall behind them. Eyes that were no longer clover, irises of amber stared unflinchingly into his own. Before she cowered in her nakedness, now she didn't seem to notice, though for all his arrogance and earlier lustful urgings, Loki could not bear to touch her even if to push her away.

The quiet sweetness of her voice was replaced by the vulgarity of a woman seasoned by hardship, perhaps by her own death.

"What did you do?"

Loki felt indignation overtake him, his shoulders finally rose in an attempt to rid himself of her body, he was again surprised by her strength when she lifted his head towards her only to smash the back of it against the wall. Cracks erupted like fireworks behind his messy black hair. Superficial pain buzzed in his ears, though it was enough for him to miss her leaning forward with a snarl.

"WHAT IN THE FUCK DID YOU DO?"

A whisper of something unnamed passed from her core to his, he recognized in her a soul that bore a likeness to his own.

Loki decided to be honest.

The duration of his silence added pinpricks of irritation to the mounting pressure behind her eyes; which quickly dissipated when he unfolded his smile for only her to see.

"I've turned you into a monster. Just like me."

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I am nauseatingly excited about this story. My Loki is going to be darker than your average Loki, though he might need to be in order to contend with the subject matter.

This chapter was written without the use of a beta.

This beast is going to be slow with the updates. I have a rather large scope as of now, so I need to work on cutting out the junk that doesn't help further the story.

Reviews are appreciated, yo.


	2. viven

Disclaimer: I do not own any DC or Marvel characters or locations. I'm just using them to work out some issues with my muse.

Marlene, Viven, and the magical bullshit that I create therein, however, is totes mine.

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Creation Myth

By: Idle Sovereign

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Chapter Two:

**Viven**

'Monster?'

The familiar word echoed in her memory.

Time waited for the pair to notice its passing. Neither of them seemed particularly interested in it as they gazed at one another for significantly different reasons.

When Marlene finally broke away from his stare she noticed the moisture on her arms had evaporated.

The bewildered woman scooted herself to the floor towards the tub and crawled to it like a toddler, then used the edge to prop herself up into a crouched position. The man- boy behind her observed the scene with quiet restraint; he was waiting for life to abandon her again, to leave him stranded with her husk.

"I'm a god-damn child..." Marlene uttered in muted self-deprecation.

"You are centuries older than you appear." He rose to his feet. "As am I."

This earned him a snort in return. "I have unexpired milk older than you."

Almost as if flipping a switch in the borrowed body, she staggered to her full height; her capability to control her limbs increasing tenfold. Her trembling hands ran the contours of her stomach, where they paused in an unconscious effort at self-soothing. The young age of her new body hadn't been to what she'd been referring, but it was also something of note.

Marlene frowned down at her toes, unable to fathom his matter-of-fact relationship with immortality.

"Though, I know you're not lying." This admission made her arms drop. "How do I know you're not lying?" Why the hell was she being so calm?

Her body had moved on impulse when she had come to on the floor of the bathroom. She had been hunched over the body of a man that had ever reason to hurt her. When the danger lessened so had her instinctual rage. "What the fuck is going on?"

In was not in her nature to be forgiving.

It was the other girl.

She was still in here.

Her consciousness frittered around in Marlene's brain like an anxious sparrow.

"Would you object to me dressing-" The figure behind her eased forward as it spoke.

"Stop right there, baby-face. I don't need your eager beaver virgin energy anywhere near me."

That was all Marlene.

She did an about face to confront the prince, who had frozen on the spot in response to her acidic tone.

The desire to speak was there, but he couldn't conjure the words. How was it that he was incapable of reprimanding her? Not only had she attempted to leave him after all he had done, now she was speaking to him as if he were a servant, and not even a well-loved servant. He might as well have been prostrate before her, waiting for her to wipe her feet on his back.

The prince's question was immediately answered when she smiled playfully at his sour expression and it made all of his prior indignation flicker out of existence. "I had a small selection of clothing made for you," he said while keeping his eyes trained on her face. "Perhaps I should leave you to dress yourself, give you some time to figure your way into a proper mode of conduct when addressing someone to whom you owe so very much."

He turned away without another word. There was something about her now, the flavor of her personality was tainted with a hint of bitterness that wasn't there before.

"What's my name?" Her coltish expression was gone, though she was admittedly forced not to smirk when she saw how his gangly frame tightened. "...or were we not long enough acquainted for it to be of interest to you?" She padded past him to a table of gowns situated by the noticeably unsparing bed. In her mind, Marlene compared it to the unmade twin waiting for her back in her apartment. It made her stomach churn.

"I am beginning to sense that it matters very little, the name that you might have carried before, as you are certainly not the same creature."

"On that point we can certainly agree, baby-face." Marlene shot back as she lowered the selected garment over her body. It was an empire style dress with orchid beading at the bust, the same purple fabric fell almost to the floor, with bell sleeves that opened to reveal her forearms. At least she hadn't disappeared into the land of the ubiquitous bodice.

"You are Loki," Marlene said as she gazed at her reflection in a full-length mirror tucked into a corner by the dressing table. How did she know? It was like the information came to her in a dream, she was only know about to recall it.

"I am." His voice was back under his control, though his body seemed less disciplined. Loki was at her back within moments. Marlene got the feeling he was rather pleased with her choice in clothing, at least if his lingering stare was anything to go by.

"May I..." The catch in Loki's voice was enough to distract her from her own reflection, she flicked haunted eyes up to watch his face over her shoulder. "...touch your hair?"

The tips of his pale fingers were already- presumptuously- hovering over the chaotic twist of champagne curls at her neck. Loki took a shallow breath, steeling his ego against the rejection he could practically scent in the air.

He shot back with a noise of surprise when the mirror before them exploded into a spiderweb of cracks.

"THIS ISN'T MY HAIR!"

The woman's voice was bifurcated, split between the sweet voice of the woman he'd fallen in lightening fast love with and the vulgar roar of who she was now. This was the anger she'd been searching for, the vindicating and purifying expression of feeling that had been just out of reach. "Son of a bitch- there it is! What in the hell did you do to me?" Marlene watched him without the use of the mirror, having turned to feed him all of her acidic fury.

"My head is full of someone else! My body...this isn't my fucking body...she's not ready to let it go." There were daggers of pain in her knees, she'd fallen to the floor again. It felt worse in this form. The air suddenly tasted like summer and a feeling, the closest Marlene would ever come to euphoria, overwhelmed her anguish.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Marlene does not remember waking.

Boundless fields of green distracted her from the approaching figure of leather and wildly dyed hair, it reminded her of someone.

"I do hope you do not mind. Since you have taken possession of my body, I thought it fitting that I commandeer the one you were not using." Marlene found herself staring stupidly at her own body, her face smiling down at her lounging form. "Nah. My ass looks good on you."

The space between them became awkward, Mirage-lene took the opportune silence to sit in the knee-high grass. "This is a world of our mutual creation, well, it might be if you were as I am."

"I highly doubt it." There were much better places that Marlene could dream up.

"I'm Marlene, by the way."

"I know. I am Viven."

"I know."

They spoke quietly to one another as their eyes strayed over their bodies, each of them desperately wishing to return home. This was not a meeting that would ever be repeated and this would be the last time they would ever be near their own flesh. It was important that everything was said now.

Marlene turned to speak first, but Viven only smiled kindly before interrupting. "My cognitive abilities far exceed your own. I am able to bend memories any way that I wish, I can remember what you remember and I will have them as my own." She used her palms to inch closer towards the warmth of her old body. "It is for you that I worry, Marlene. Your soul is mortal. You kind has a tendency to deteriorate under conditions such as these."

A gust of wind blew both their hair back from their faces, carrying a whisper from outside of their world. It was a voice that made Marlene quake.

Loki was trying to find her here.

All of the life in Viven's features seemed to wither away, slivers of fear etched their way into the corners of her eyes. Marlene's thwacked the back of her old head with a laugh. "Hey! Stop giving me crow's feet! That body is six years away from forty and I haven't had winkle one. Don't you ruin all of my hard work."

It was break in tension that both of them needed.

After a moment of girlish laughter, the mood sobered with another gust of intrusive wind.

"The one you are with is a prince of a realm called Asgard." The look of shock on Marlene's face said it all. "He seems a child to you, correct?"

"Yes. I thought he was like, seventeen or something."

Viven nodded. "In appearance perhaps, though he is a great deal older than even your great-great grandparents. Sadly, I do not think he has adequate time to mature. Time is a curious thing, it fluctuates greatly between the realms."

The solemness that overcame her face gave Marlene a chill. "He was...obsessive in his pursuit of my affections. I proclaimed my commitment to purity, that I would be disavowed if I...I explained that my love could only be a lie." There was a hatred in her voice now. "He said that my feelings were of little consequence so long as I seemed convincing. He suggested that if I gave this to him for a short time that he would set me free."

"He lied." Marlene finished for her. Viven looked at her with festering pain. "I set myself free instead. I am so sorry, Marlene." Marlene touched Viven's- her hand- with the tips of her fingers with a reassuring smile. "Tell me about before, yeah? What are you?" This was something that seemed to brighten the woman's face instantly.

"If I were gifted with the time to tell my story, then you would have complimented your hind quarters for being so lucky to be on me instead."

Marlene decided she liked Viven very much.

"If you have my memories, then you know about my, eh, um, my..."

"Violent outbursts and thoughts of causing harm to those you perceive to be undeserving of their lives?"

"Yeah..."

"I also noted that your body reacts with a kind of arousal at the sight of or opportunity for violence-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! That's years of repressed feelings your ripping the bindings off of, sweetcheeks. I just want to know why I don't...I don't feel it so much now."

She rested her chin on her knees as she looked to Viven for answers. They also didn't seem to be bothering the new tenet in her body either. The desires hadn't disappeared altogether. They appeared to be behind a barely opaque glass door; Marlene could see them, but they could still be kept closed away.

"My brain is perfect."

"I'm sorry?"

"Nor does it suffer from any chemical imbalance. Your consciousness is now using my brain to function, though as a mortal you are forced to use what it given to you. My soul, to put it bluntly, is far stronger than yours. I began to repair this body the moment I awoke. You will still feel these urges from time to time, yes, though now your brain is far more apt in the art of suppression. "

A wave of warm optimism washed over the former Gothamite. "I might get better?"

Viven smiled fondly at her companion. "Yes."

"Why were you dressed this way when you died?" It was Viven's turn to speak.

"I thought you knew all." Marlene pretended to push a pair of glasses up her nose, then dropped her hand back down onto her knee.

"There are a few images that have yet to focus."

"I work at a very profitable gay nightclub. My job is to maintain the entrance: check I.D,s, accept payment, turn away the jerk-offs just out to ruin everyone's good time. We have themed nights and that night was Joker themed." It was tacky, but fuck did it draw the customers. "You can't bring me back home, can you?"

"Not now."

Marlene slumped into the grass with a groan. "I can't do this, Vi. I'm not strong enough to handle...the mirror." This time when the wind blew it was so cold it rattled her bones. "VI!" She called out over the howling force. "WHY AM I SO-" Her words were swallowed up by the bellowing voice from the sky.

"_Wake up, please!" _

"Goodbye, Marlene Noble! Do not let him ruin you! I will do all that I can to reach you again! BE STRONG!"

"_Do not leave me again, precious thing. I cannot bear to lose you." _

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Loki felt his very marrow burn as she again fell lifelessly to the ground. The tremors in his hands couldn't be ceased even as he hauled her head and shoulders onto his lap.

She was a Vanith, she had to reawaken.

He blinked rapidly at the newness of this thought. How did he know it? The prince looked down to find a book flipped open by his left thigh.

Time was shifting again.

Loki lifted his eyes up to the windows. It had become day within a matter of seconds.

Movement of the body cradled in his lap drew his focus back to his girl, seemingly again reborn after his woeful begging for her to return. Loki's thin fingers brushed along the sides of her face, dripping just to the curve of her neck, then back up again. It was the first time he had been allowed to sooth her without interference.

She groaned quietly into the space between them. It was apparently quite exhausting to be dragged back from a universe created by the linked souls of two different species.

"You are proving to be a teasing creature, my sweet."

The woman in his lap, who had previously been attempting to sit up, collapsed with a frustrated sigh.

"Marlene. My name is Marlene, god-dammit."

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Yes. I am aware that there is A LOT of shit to process. I shall try not to let it happen again.

Reviews mean that you love me!


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